Synopses & Reviews
In 1914, as rumors of war float across Europe, Edna Ferber travels to Budapest with Winifred Moss, a famous London suffragette, to visit the homeland of her dead father and to see the sights. Author Edna is fascinated by ancient Emperor Franz Joseph and by the faltering Austro-Hungarian Empire, its pomp and circumstance so removed from the daily life of the people she meets. Sitting daily in the Café Europa at her hotel, she listens to unfettered Hearst reporter Harold Gibbon as he predicts the coming war and the end of feudalistic life in Europe while patrons chatter. Then a shocking murder in a midnight garden changes everything. Headstrong Cassandra Blaine is supposed to marry into the Austrian nobility in one of those arranged matches like Consuela Vanderbilt's still popular with wealthy American parents eager for titles and impoverished European nobility who have them to offer. But Cassandra is murdered, and her former lover, the dashing Hungarian Endre Molnár, is the prime suspect. Taken with the young man and convinced of his innocence, Edna begins investigating with the help of Winifred and two avant-garde Hungarian artists. Meanwhile possible war with Serbia is the topic of the day as Archduke Franz Ferdinand prepares to head to Sarajevo. While the world braces for disaster, Edna uncovers the truth--and it scares her.
Review
Set in 1914, Ifkovic's so-so sixth Edna Ferber mystery (after 2014's Final Curtain) takes the bestselling writer to Budapest, in the company of Winifred Moss, a British suffragette. The pair stay at a shabby hotel, the Árpád, where Edna can't resist scrutinizing the other guests. She sees that Cassandra Blaine, a wealthy young American woman about to be forced into marriage with a European aristocrat, is not just spoiled but terrified; Cassandra's murder sets Edna off to find the killer among the eccentric, suspicious characters hanging around the Árpád. The proceedings are enlivened by the antics of Harold Gibbon--an obnoxious but plucky reporter for Hearst's sensational newspapers--but slowed down by excessive detail about what Edna and Winifred are seeing and eating. The feverish, doomed-operetta atmosphere is relevant, since Europe is on the brink of WWI. That the solution to the mystery relies heavily on international politics, however, diminishes Edna's personal investigation. Publisher's Weekly
Synopsis
"Ifkovic successfully blends homicide with a loving homage to Budapest on the eve of World War I." --Kirkus Reviews
In 1914, as rumors of war float across Europe, Edna Ferber travels to Budapest with Winifred Moss, a famous London suffragette, to visit the homeland of her dead father and to see the sights. Author Edna is fascinated by ancient Emperor Franz Joseph and by the faltering Austro-Hungarian Empire, its pomp and circumstance so removed from the daily life of the people she meets. Sitting daily in the Caf Europa at her hotel, she listens to unfettered Hearst reporter Harold Gibbon as he predicts the coming war and the end of feudalistic life in Europe while patrons chatter.
Then a shocking murder in a midnight garden changes everything.
Headstrong Cassandra Blaine is supposed to marry into the Austrian nobility in one of those arranged matches like Consuela Vanderbilt's still popular with wealthy American parents eager for titles and impoverished European nobility who have them to offer. But Cassandra is murdered, and her former lover, the dashing Hungarian Endre Moln r, is the prime suspect. Taken with the young man and convinced of his innocence, Edna begins investigating with the help of Winifred and two avant-garde Hungarian artists. Meanwhile possible war with Serbia is the topic of the day as Archduke Franz Ferdinand prepares to head to Sarajevo. While the world braces for disaster, Edna uncovers the truth--and it scares her.
About the Author
Ed Ifkovic taught literature and creative writing at a community college in Connecticut for more than three decades and now devotes himself to writing fiction. Downtown Strut is the fourth mystery in his Edna Ferber Mystery series for Poisoned Pen Press.